Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose
A Student-Centred Approach
1st Edition
Published on 28. January 2016
192 pages
978-1-4725-9964-3 (ISBN)
Description
What does it mean to teach Shakespeare with purpose? It means freeing teachers from the notion that teaching Shakespeare means teaching everything, or teaching "Western Civilisation" and universal themes. Instead, this invigorating new book equips teachers to enable student-centred discovery of these complex texts.
Because Shakespeare's plays are excellent vehicles for many topics -history, socio-cultural norms and mores, vocabulary, rhetoric, literary tropes and terminology, performance history, performance strategies - it is tempting to teach his plays as though they are good for teaching everything. This lens-free approach, however, often centres the classroom on the teacher as the expert and renders Shakespeare's plays as fixed, determined, and dead. Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeare's works as vehicles for collaborative exploration, to develop intentional frames for discovery, and to release the texts from over-determined interpretations. In other words, this book presents how to teach Shakespeare's plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.
Because Shakespeare's plays are excellent vehicles for many topics -history, socio-cultural norms and mores, vocabulary, rhetoric, literary tropes and terminology, performance history, performance strategies - it is tempting to teach his plays as though they are good for teaching everything. This lens-free approach, however, often centres the classroom on the teacher as the expert and renders Shakespeare's plays as fixed, determined, and dead. Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose shows teachers how to approach Shakespeare's works as vehicles for collaborative exploration, to develop intentional frames for discovery, and to release the texts from over-determined interpretations. In other words, this book presents how to teach Shakespeare's plays as living, breathing, and evolving texts.
More details
Edition
1. Auflage
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
ISBN-13
978-1-4725-9964-3 (9781472599643)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
01/2016
The Arden Shakespeare
€35.00
Shipment within 15-20 days
Book
01/2016
The Arden Shakespeare
€152.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Ayanna Thompson is a Regents Professor of English and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) at Arizona State University. She is the author of Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach, co-authored with Laura Turchi (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (forthcoming Cambridge University Press, 2021), Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010), and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006). She is currently collaborating with Curtis Perry on the Arden4 edition of Titus Andronicus. She was the 2018-19 President of the Shakespeare Association of America, and served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Marshall Scholars. She was one of Phi Beta Kappa's Visiting Scholars for 2017-2018.
Content
Chapter One: Introduction: The Realities of the 21st Century
Chapter Two: Finding Your Purpose and Putting It into Action: Framing
Chapter Three: 'Ancient English': Shakespeare's Language
Chapter Four: Embodiment: What Is It (Not)?
Chapter Five: History: What Time Are You Thinking About?
Chapter Six: Writing Assignments with a Purpose
Chapter Seven: Assessment with a Purpose
Chapter Eight: The Tyranny of Resources
Bibliography
Index
Chapter Two: Finding Your Purpose and Putting It into Action: Framing
Chapter Three: 'Ancient English': Shakespeare's Language
Chapter Four: Embodiment: What Is It (Not)?
Chapter Five: History: What Time Are You Thinking About?
Chapter Six: Writing Assignments with a Purpose
Chapter Seven: Assessment with a Purpose
Chapter Eight: The Tyranny of Resources
Bibliography
Index
